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Google Catalogs BETA

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Jasen James

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User since: March 31, 2001

Last login: January 29, 2009

Articles written: 3

Our Favourite Search Engine Just Got Better

Just when you thought Google was great, it just got better. Google has become infamous by now, after all even an evolt.org lurker would know about Google after searching thelist archives. A search on Google is normally the first suggestion from people i have spoken to, and its popularity is equally evident on thelist and from Cable TV programs such as The Screen Savers on TechTv.

In an attempt to broaden their search, Google has made an attempt to catalog "catalogs". Although there is no facility for purchase from Google, full print catalogs from cover pages to inside pages can be viewed and enlarged to show fairly detailed images of the selected catalogs' pages. Also included are the company's contact info such as name, phone number, URL, etc.

Seems like a good move on their part, although some of the drawbacks can include lengthy download times for people who do not use broadband connections (actually mentioned in their help) — such as the largest detailed image after drilling down a few pages 178kb, and also the fact that the catalogs are actually only images and not text.

What is also neat is the fact that there are over 600 catalogs listed on the site to peruse and search. It's free for catalog publishers to sign up at the moment, but we can expect that this service will acquire some kind of charge at some point in time, as most search engines have done.


profjj
http://cbizz.net

Jasen James [profjj] works as a Web Application Developer and IT Consultant for Computer & Business Services, a small company which he owns, in the tropical Caribbean island of St. Lucia - "Paradise on Earth"., which is host to the now infamous annual St. Lucia Jazz Festival.

This is a useless feature.

Submitted by prowsej on December 22, 2001 - 11:18.

I usually laud Google for their achievements. However, I think this is a stupid feature. 1. They're images! If every web site were made the way Google is making this site, Google wouldn't exist - the web wouldn't be indexable! Google should be a good citizen to help out the search engines. 2. The design is clunky. Perhaps its that I've never been a fan of paper-based catalogues, but I find myself asking "what's the point?" How is this better than mySimon.com? Why not let the companies reformat their catalogues in HTML and then create a search engine to compare multiple company's products? This doesn't seem well thought out. *boo* *hiss*

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not so useless ... try again

Submitted by ironclad on December 24, 2001 - 04:43.

Did you try doing a search? Those catalogs are more than just great honkin' images ... all the text content has been fed into google for searching on, very handy. As to letting the company's reformat their catalogs into HTML ... I didn't know they weren't allowed to. Maybe there's some other reason they haven't done so as yet, like maybe cost?

All kidding aside, Google is doing something interesting here. I can't wait to see how they integrate google's famous social context indexing into it too.

One suggestion I have for them though, is in the little search form when viewing a catalog they currently have "Search [this catalog]", "Search all catalogs", and "Search the web" ... the least they could do right now is to add "Search catalogs of [this category]".

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Okay, maybe it's not so bad

Submitted by prowsej on December 29, 2001 - 14:33.

I tried it out some more, and I concede that there is some value to this feature. I think that in order to accomidate this sort of situation a new type of file format needs to be adopted: - Browsers could actually support JNG - PDF Files could act as normal image files

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